Real journalism will be paid for and appreciated by the elite, and the public, the masses, will have to live with bad clickbait.
including myself, which im kind of ashamed of
Of course, this might be because for many topics, actual authoritative research and meaningful discussion happens among enthusiasts and industry figures rather than media outlets. So anything you hear about in a tech related publication is probably second hand info quickly written up by someone who isn't necessarily an expect in the subject matter...
Also, and I hate to say this because nobody likes this model, but what if news took on a cable TV model where you pay $20/month and subscribe to a few different pubs, maybe even allowing you to make your own bundles? What if it was a box we could tick on our internet bill?
btw I subscribe to a few local news sites and the horrible thing is that it's becoming a slippery slope. Now even though I only hit science.org once in awhile for instance it's like, guhhhh I feel guilty for blocking all their trackers and ads, and I should pay something.
All the subscriptions I've seen deeply outweigh the cost of delivering the content to me. The Guardian had an interesting CTA where they asked me to subscribe for $13/month because I've read 20 articles this year. That worked out to about $1 per minute of reading time, which doesn't reflect the value of their work (and I think their work is pretty good!). If they had more subscribers would they charge less? And why does serving electronic content now cost so much more than a paper version?
You're describing the New York Times subscription model, fwiw.
You'll have to scroll down (and visit each individual page) to get to the separate subscription plans, because dark patterns, but it is still available as an option.